Socialists should not support rival camps in the world today, but oppose all authoritarianism and instead advance democratic and social rights to inspire hope and mobilise support, argues Mike Phipps.

“The Times They Are-a-Changin: Labour is no longer the default left option,” headlined the Morning Star last week.

“We have finally reached the end of Labour’s claim to be the political wing of the labour movement, and the diverse left forces challenging Starmer’s pro-austerity, pro-war government deserve our open support,” writes Andrew Murray. Murray spent forty years in the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Communist Party of Britain before joining Labour a year after Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader and working as his advisor. It’s unclear what the “We” implies about his current political affiliation.

In any case, Murray’s article is a report of  a speech delivered by party General Secretary Rob Griffiths at a recent meeting of its Political Committee indicating that the long-standing position of “Vote Labour where no communist is standing” no longer applies.

There will be many socialists who feel betrayed by Keir Starmer’s government who will welcome this announcement. Local independents, campaigning particularly against the UK’s support for Israel’s bombing of Gaza, did well at the last general election and there is currently much talk about a new party around Jeremy Corbyn being declared.

But the article’s justifications for the change of line seem a bit odd. It focuses on the trade unions’ loss of influence in the Labour Party, in the Blair-Brown years and now under Starmer. What the article does not tell us, however, is that the affiliated unions frequently use their influence and vote – especially at meetings of Labour’s National Executive Committee – to back Starmer and marginalise the Party’s left. This is a central problem that will not be cracked by walking away from the Labour Party – unless it is being suggested that we walk away from the trade unions as well.

Not so new

The Communist Party’s ‘new line’ on elections is not as new as it appears. Think back to the 2019 election campaign for the European Parliament during Corbyn’s embattled leadership – the CP called for an abstention.

Now, not only would a boycott of Labour candidates have allowed the right to go unchallenged. Worse, it would have struck a blow at the Corbyn project itself. A poor result for Labour would have inevitably been blamed on the leadership, jeopardising the whole project.

That did not deter the Morning Star and its supporters, however. For many socialists, refusing to call for a Labour vote under Jeremy Corbyn crossed a line – but of course the Communist pursuit of Brexit at all costs overrode that. Thankfully, this organisation enjoys far less influence than it once had.

Such points should be remembered when the claim is made that these people are a steady friend of the Labour left. They are not. And that is one reason among many why it is wrong, as many on the Labour left are prone to do, to outsource our thinking on international policy to the Morning Star and others.

Of course, like the Morning Star, socialists are opposed to the lawless authoritarianism that characterises the Trump Administration, as well as the utter hypocrisy of European centrist neoliberalism, which weeps crocodile tears over Russian atrocities in Ukraine but ignores the Western-armed genocide in Gaza. We oppose the military and financial pressure the US and its allies apply to countries that dare to challenge their interests. We are in solidarity with the people of Venezuela, Cuba and many others.

But we cannot see the solution in terms of supporting any of the rival imperialisms, such as Russia, whose many war crimes are routinely ignored by the Morning Star and its supporters.

I was active in the Stop the War Coalition for nearly 20 years and chaired a local branch  of the campaign for much of that time. In my opinion, it was a widespread popular commitment to universal human rights and revulsion at the indiscriminate bombing of Iraqi civilians in the public mind that underpinned the success in public opinion terms of the movement. Even if we did not stop the war in Iraq, we forever associated Tony Blair with this terrible atrocity based on lies and deception.  

And later we had real success in stopping Western intervention in Syria in 2013. The memories of our massive mobilisations over Iraq pressurised Labour leader Ed Miliband into withdrawing support from Prime Minister Cameron’s proposed military intervention, which caused that policy to be abandoned. That led in turn to the Obama Administration abandoning the whole adventure, on the grounds that if Britain wasn’t backing it, it would look like a purely American operation, which of course it had been all along.

Today we are in a very different situation. The second presidency of Donald Trump is strengthening global tendencies towards militarism and authoritarianism.

Trump encourages Israel’s ongoing genocide against Gaza. It green-lights Israel’s bombing of Iran. And by its indifference to the suffering of the Ukrainian people, blaming the victims and echoing the propaganda of Putin’s authoritarian regime in its war of aggression and colonisation, it encourages Russia and other authoritarian states in their oppressive brutality and aggression.

Ukraine and Palestine

Ukraine and Palestine are both small nations resisting a vicious colonial power. Their circumstances and allies are different, but their causes stand on the same foundation. Both Ukrainians and Palestinians have a right to be free and to resist genocide and occupation. Both peoples deserve our international solidarity.

As Vermont State Senator Tanya Vyhovsky, speaking at a recent ‘No Kings’ anti-Trump protest, said: “We can never forget that our futures are inextricably linked: from Ukraine to Palestine – Occupation is a crime… From Ukraine to Palestine, from Vermont to California, we must defeat injustice everywhere to defeat authoritarianism.”

You won’t hear this kind of internationalism from the Stop the War Coalition these days. It trades on its once-proud legacy to pursue a one-sided line that dismisses the interests of the people of Ukraine who are fighting for their existence.

As we have previously argued, “Formally, the Stop the War Coalition calls for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine. But you will find little coverage of the appalling war crimes committed by the invaders – well-documented by human rights organisations – or the resistance to them by often defenceless Ukrainian civilians. If any other occupying power was massacring civilians in cold blood, you would expect to hear about it from your local anti-war movement. Ukraine, however, is excepted.”

Instead, the conflict is framed as a ‘NATO proxy war’.  Just days before the Russian bombardment began in 2022, Tariq Ali mocked the notion of an imminent invasion as a “highly orchestrated media campaign” in an article entitled “News from Natoland”.

In realty, Ukraine is not likely to become a member of NATO. That was the view of senior US officials, who did not want the treaty obligations which that would entail, even before Trump returned to the White House.

But the logic of this incorrect framing of the conflict as a  ‘NATO proxy war’ leads to quite outrageous conclusions, where facts must be twisted to fit the analysis. In a piece of staggering political illiteracy, leading Stop the War member Lindsey German called the argument for Ukrainian self-determination  “spurious”, as “Ukraine does not have self-determination from the Nato powers.”

She added: “Russia having North Korean troops in their own country is hardly sign of escalation on their side,” bizarrely comparing the 10,000 North Korean combat soldiers participating actively in the conflict to the stationing of US troops in some West European countries.

This inability to see the dangers of more than one imperialism in the world today – ‘campism’, for want of a better term – is both pernicious and enduring. In a detailed analysis, Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval wrote: “One could have hoped to be definitively immunized against this stupidity with the collapse of the ‘Soviet bloc’… One could have believed that no oppression, no violation of human rights, no transgression of international law, no power grab, whether from the West or the East, the North or the South, could  any longer be justified once the Cold War was over. We were wrong. Lazy bad habits have obviously persisted.”

Authoritarianism versus democracy

To emphasise: the second Trump Administration is creating conditions where all imperialist aggressors, authoritarians and anti-liberal regimes are emboldened. We are heading for a global confrontation between authoritarianism and democracy. The fundamental freedoms of individuals, alongside the national right of peoples to self-determination and their social rights to live in peace, with access to food, healthcare housing and social security – all are being called into question.

These basic rights constitute the alternative that we as socialists have to organise around, if we are to win people to a more hopeful way forward. Tony Benn understood this when he spoke in February 2003 at the huge million-strong anti-Iraq War demonstration in London: “We are here today to found a new political movement worldwide… what we are about is getting democracy all over the world. So we can build a world that is safe for our children and grandchildren…  I want to see the money wasted on weapons of mass destruction diverted to give the world what it needs. Which is food, and clothing, and housing. And schools and hospitals. And to protect the old, the sick and the disabled. My friends, that is what we are here about today.”

Rising authoritarianism undermines this possibility ever becoming a reality. But to see Western governments as the sole threat to our fundamental rights is not only to misunderstand the world. It also minimises the abuse of these rights by those who posture with anti-American imperialist credentials.

Too many on the ‘left’ were silent, for example, on the atrocities of the Assad regime in Syria against its own people. Many Syrians felt betrayed by this lack of internationalism, as this writer underlined: “Those of us who directly opposed the Assad regime, often at a very heavy price, did so not because of a Western imperialist plot, but because decades of abuse, brutality and corruption were and remain intolerable.” Yet there are still some so-called socialists who lament the overthrow of one the world’s most murderous regimes.

The world today: camps or classes?

So now, as Israel goes to war against Iran, do not expect to see the Stop the War Coalition platforming critics of the Tehran regime. That would presumably be too complicated for people to understand. The one-sided ‘campist’ view is not just stupid: it assumes stupidity in others too.

Once, in another age, leading Stop the War figures could stand on a flawless record of speaking out against Saddam Hussein’s abuse of the peoples of Iraq. Jeremy Corbyn had immense credibility as an opponent of the war on Iraq precisely because he had consistently opposed that regime’s atrocities, including its use of chemical weapons against the Kurds, while others had not only remained silent but minimised these crimes in order to justify selling Iraq weapons.

We live in a world where horrific violence against innocent civilians is again being normalised. We have the unprovoked bombardment of Ukraine – and the apparent inability of the world to stop it, despite the supposedly all-powerful Western imperialisms (which in practice do not really want effective sanctions against Russia that might upset global oil markets). This encourages and normalises Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and Iran – and Russia’s aggression is reciprocally normalised by this too.

The global authoritarians want a world of war, militarism, exploitation and armed conflict. The weaponry and tactics unleashed on supposed enemies abroad will of course end up being used to police protest and dissent at home.

That’s because ordinary people who want peace and better life chances are also the enemies of the new authoritarians. This is why the latter must be opposed wherever and whoever they are. It may superficially look like a global conflict between rival camps: in fact, it’s am international class struggle.

Mike Phipps’ book Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2022) can be ordered here.

Image: Anti-war march, London, February 2003, https://www.flickr.com/photos/simonru/1666699305 Licence: Attribution 2.0 Generic CC BY 2.0 Deed